Spirituality of the Psalms by Walter Brueggemann is entirely free this month, and you can add Brueggemann’s David’s Truth: In Israel’s Imagination and Memory for only 99 cents! This is an amazing price for these volumes, and they are well worth reading! Get both today.
The Psalms are simultaneously some of the most studied and most ignored pages of Scripture. We turn to certain favorites when we need inspiration, but do we plumb the depths of despair with the psalmists? How do we grapple with God’s goodness or cry out for his salvation and mercy? Brueggemann notes that as “children of the Enlightenment, we have censored and selected around the voice of darkness and disorientation, seeking to go from strength to strength, from victory to victory. But such a way not only ignores the Psalms; it is a lie in terms of our experience.”
In Spirituality of the Psalms Brueggemann deals with psalms on their own ground, and the end result is beautiful.
I have concluded at the end of the study (and not as a presupposition) that the shape and dynamic of the Psalms can most usefully be understood according to the theological framework of crucifixion and resurrection.
Using a model of “orientation—disorientation—new orientation,” he demonstrates that the Psalms help us see our new orientation in light of God’s work, in spite of the surrounding darkness of this world.
Because this One has promised to be in the darkness with us, we find the darkness strangely transformed, not by the power of easy light, but by the power of relentless solidarity. Out of the “fear not” of that One spoken in the darkness, we are marvelously given new life, we know not how. The Psalms are a boundary (Jeremiah 5:22) thrown up against self-deception. They do not permit us to ignore and deny the darkness, personally or publicly, for that is where new life is given, whether on the third day or by some other uncontrolled schedule at work among us.
Grab this book free today, and add a second Walter Brueggemann title for just a buck.
Get them both, and start reading!